The Case of Miles Harrison
Gene Weingarten reports for the Washington Post on the terrifying and horrible case of Miles Harrison:
The charge in the courtroom was manslaughter, brought by the Commonwealth of Virginia. No significant facts were in dispute. Miles Harrison, 49, was an amiable person, a diligent businessman and a doting, conscientious father until the day last summer — beset by problems at work, making call after call on his cellphone — he forgot to drop his son, Chase, at day care. The toddler slowly sweltered to death, strapped into a car seat for nearly nine hours in an office parking lot in Herndon in the blistering heat of July.
It was an inexplicable, inexcusable mistake, but was it a crime? That was the question for a judge to decide.
I’m not sure this is the only perspective with which to look at a case like this, but rather than asking if it “was” a crime, one might ask what one thinks could be accomplished by hitting Harrison with criminal sanctions. Do we fear that there’ll be an upswing in this sort of thing if people think they can get away with accidentally killing their children? That doesn’t seem right to me. If the issue is a belief that it’s not really an accident, that’s one thing. But if not, then I don’t see how jail time would make a horrible situation any less horrible.
99 Responses to “The Case of Miles Harrison”
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March 9th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I know from experience (nothing like this, of course) that it’s easy to become less aware (or forget) that a sleeping child is strapped into a back seat. I shudder to think how Harrison feels, and will always feel.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
To be fair, the author of the piece addresses the very issue you bring up in this post:
There may be no act of human failing that more fundamentally challenges our society’s views about crime, punishment, justice and mercy. According to statistics compiled by a national childs’ safety advocacy group, in about 40 percent of cases authorities examine the evidence, determine that the child’s death was a terrible accident — a mistake of memory that delivers a lifelong sentence of guilt far greater than any a judge or jury could mete out — and file no charges. In the other 60 percent of the cases, parsing essentially identical facts and applying them to essentially identical laws, authorities decide that the negligence was so great and the injury so grievous that it must be called a felony, and it must be aggressively pursued.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
There’s a long discussion of this article at Making Light, if you’re interested.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
DTM – As the former father of a toddler (we both survived the experience), it shook me to read that story, too. But things aren’t declared a crime in order expand your reading list. You declare something a crime so you can punish those who commit it. The idea that someone like Miles Harrison should go to jail – or spend months in fear of having to do so – so you will be “forced to read things you really don’t want to read” is really a remarkable callous idea.
If you read the linked article, the differences between the DAs who chose to prosecute and those who didn’t as well as the comments of some jurors were pretty thought provoking.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I really could have gone without reading this…ever.
- Father of a 3-year old
March 9th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
weingarten’s article follows pretty closely in the footsteps of an a.p. article from 2007:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/07/28/state/n092859D82.DTL
March 9th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I have to say, I find attempts to normalize or downplay such an occurrence more than a little troubling.
How on EARTH do you “forget” to drop your baby off at day care, and leave it strapped into the back of a car with all the windows up on a hot summer day? I am flakey and forgetful at times. I lose things. I can safely say that never, in a million years, would this happen to me. Yes, I can be “so sure” about that.
Should he be further punished? I don’t see the point. But a baby is dead, the police have to investigate, and they have to handle it in a certain way as per their protocols and procedures, and that may necessitate criminal proceedings of some kind. I’d go with the suspended sentence though. Whatever kind of mental lapse happened, unless this guy is just not human, he’s probably been living in hell ever since he realized what he’d done (or forgotten to do).
March 9th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Horribly sad. It reminds me of something that happened a few years ago near where I lived at the time. A father and son went deer hunting and decided after a while to split up. A little later the father took a shot a what he thought was a deer. It turned out he had killed his son. The father then committed suicide beside his son’s body.
There’s just no resolution to these kind of horrors.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
This story puts tears in my eyes. As a stay-at-home dad who is going through a really tough day, and has constant trouble trying to mix work-from-home with bringing up a baby while mommy is at work supporting the family…I hope to God I never fall to pieces like that and put my little girl in harm’s way. Good god! How horrible!
March 9th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
I knew a man once, a next door neighbor. In haste one morning to get off to work he backed his car over his 4 year old daughter. A rear tire crushed her skull as if he’d taken a hammer to an apple. He was a great family man, a teetotaler, ran marathons, top in sales in his department. Afterwards a slow, inexorable slide into madness took place. He took to drinking, quit running, lost his job and eventually put a gun in his mouth. I’m sure some prosecutor somewhere could have pressed him on his misfortune, maybe charging him with negligent manslaughter or some such cruelty. What good it would have served I’m not sure. Like Matt says, would fathers everywhere reading of his plight have looked behind their cars more diligently before backing down the drive? Regardless, the hell into which he descended was far more punishment than the justice system could have ever meted out.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
And one of the reasons to make something like this a crime is so that father of toddlers like me will read things they really don’t want to read.
That makes no sense. Harrison’s case was judged not a crime, and yet here you are reading about it.
The question we’re really dealing with is, Should cases like this be prosecuted? And that, obviously, depends on the specifics of each case. But the decision to prosecute or not should hinge on whether justice would be served by doing so, not on whether it would serve some didactic purpose.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
this also happened hear in st louis last year. in that case it was a miscommunication between dad and Mom(a pediatrician) about who was taking the baby to day care and where the baby was. baby was sleeping in the back seat, was not noticed, and baby died.
i have been in the trauma bay taking care of a little boy who was run over by his mom accidentally. i will never forget the mother’s scream when she found out she had killed her baby.
there is no punishment worse than loosing your child because of your own silly actions. these people aren’t bad people and they had never committed violence or crimes prior to these acts and the victims of these crimes were themselves and their children. there is no reason to prosecute these people. the only thing is to come up with constructive ways to prevent these types of accidents. rear-view cameras help. should there be some sort of people/child monitors in cars? perhaps.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
There ought to be some kind of a sensor on the market that electronically signals/beeps/rings if a living thing is left in the back seat and the doors lock. Or perhaps make it so the car can’t lock when a living creature is left in the car. Don’t know if it’s feasible. And it’s probably not cost effective. But these things have been known to happen.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
I think this is horrifying as a parent, but I don’t think it has anything to do with whether it is a crime or not. We don’t decide it is a crime based upon how bad the perpetrator feels about it. Would I want a babysitter who let my baby die in a car punished? Absolutely. They have the same standard of care as a parent. People get punished for accidents all the time, if they could have been prevented. People who drive too fast and kill someone can go to jail regardless of how guilty they feel about it. And this is no doubt a crime that can easily be prevented by giving yourself some kind of reminder. We all live busy lives, but only 20-25 people a year manage to kill their children by leaving them in a hot car. So, while dealing with a tragedy is heart-breaking, I don’t see any reason to mitigate the punishment under the criminal justice system.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
As a father of three, I can’t imagine anything worse than this.
I’m unemployed. I’ve got some money saved up so things will be okay for awhile. But if I didn’t have that cash our health insurance would expire at the end of this month.
The worse case scenario is that I don’t get a job and the money runs out and I can’t provide health insurance for my kids. In that scenario I would be exposing my kids to all kinds of health risks. Would my inability to take my kids to a doctor expose them to health risks that would threaten their lives as surely as leaving them in a hot car?
Without universal health care in this country, and not the patchwork of health care that the states provide under SCHIP, these are the choices that face millions of parents right now. We have parents who are have to face every day knowing they are putting their kids lives at risk.
And the Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats like Evan Bayh? They are going to fight health care at every step of the way. They don’t give a shit about my kids. I guess in the world of people like Bayh and Ben Nelson if you are unlucky enough to lose your job then tough shit.
Millions of Americans can’t go to the doctor. Their answer is, quite literally, get sick and die.
The Republicans are fighting universal health care because they are simply too stupid to see what is happening around them. But the Blue Dogs, they know they are choosing money from lobbyist over doing what is right.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
I think you missed the point here, which is that there is clearly a solution to this–the guys at NASA invented it. But there’s a market failure because no parent believes this can happen to them. So, no one will manufacture and sell this device.
Which is why, like seat belts, we should just mandate it. You can have the option to turn it off. But it should come installed and turned on.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Would it be different if it was someone else’s kid?
Let’s say this guy was tasked with dropping his kindergartner off at school and a toddler he is baby sitting off at pre-school at a different location. He remembers to do the first but not the second. Even though the guy would likely be wracked with guilt I don’t know that anyone would argue that he shouldn’t face charges for involuntary manslaughter. Why would we possibly give him a pass just because the kindergartner might be someone else’s kid and the toddler his own? Why would the order of the dropoffs change the outcome?
Because from the outside we are looking at a dead baby either way.
Once you start down the road of mitigating negligence simply on the issue of remorse you risk veering off into some deep moral ditches. I don’t think we can just go to a policy of “Shit happens but man I am so sorry”. Turn the story around a little bit, if this guy had left his dog in the back of his truck outside a casino in Nevada in August and then got distracted while gambling public opinion would be all over it. You think the gambler would get a free pass by explaining that the dog was like a kid to him? Even if it was true?
March 9th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
DTM is right, prosecuting extreme negligence raises the issue salience for those issues, and is likely to lessen instances of such negligence in the future.
Steven Duncan wrote: I’m sure some prosecutor somewhere could have pressed him on his misfortune, maybe charging him with negligent manslaughter or some such cruelty. What good it would have served I’m not sure.
I don’t know, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that being formally punished by the state would help him to stop punishing himself.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
“We don’t decide it is a crime based upon how bad the perpetrator feels about it. Would I want a babysitter who let my baby die in a car punished?”
*DING* We have a winner!
The folks saying Harrison shouldn’t have been charged with a crime seem to put themselves in Harrison’s shoes. That’s useful and usually essential when handing out punishment. It’s useless and even counter-productive when deciding if a crime has been committed.
Mike
March 9th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Once you start down the road of mitigating negligence simply on the issue of remorse you risk veering off into some deep moral ditches. I don’t think we can just go to a policy of “Shit happens but man I am so sorry”.
This kind of gets at the only argument in support of criminal charges. It’s not this guy we care about punishing — it’s the guy who leaves his kid strapped in the car outside the strip club and beats the charges because he’s able to say that it’s sorta kinda like the guy who forgot he had his kid in the car at work. If “oh crap, I forgot, I’m sorry” becomes the standard defense, then there are going to be a lot of people taking risks and doing stupid things because it’s only illegal if you meant to hurt the kid. Not to mention the difficulties in disproving that the person just forgot that his kid was in the car. The argument is that it’s better to put the onus on parents to remember, and while that might result in a few wrongful convictions, you have to balance it against the rightful ones that would otherwise not happen with a different rule.
(And by the way, I’m not saying I agree with the foregoing, just that it is a nontrivial argument.)
(And by the way by the way, if I did anything to severely hurt or worse my little girl, I’d eat a gun so fast it would make your head spin. I half felt like doing that the time a couple of years ago when she was playing in my lap and fell off, and I almost managed to grab her before she faceplanted on our stone patio. Seeing her bruised and scratched face for a week made me very sad.)
March 9th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
The point isn’t to screw people for mistakenly leaving their kids in the car, although they will get screwed. Rather, it’s to alert the parents who periodically leave the kids in the car “for a few minutes” that they will get screwed, too. This was a particularly important point to make in AZ, back in my day.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Perhaps in prison he won’t have any more children to accidentally kill.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Rather, it’s to alert the parents who periodically leave the kids in the car “for a few minutes”
I never got this. Shit can happen to your kids if you leave them in the car for a few minutes. My 2.5 year old knows how to undo her seatbelt and cause all sorts of mischief. Heck, I’d bet even odds that she’d pop her seatbelt, open the door and climb out, and come chasing after me (”Daddy! Wait! Wait for me Daddy!” — she’s a bit of a Daddy’s girl).
Plus, toddlers — especially little girls — are total babe magnets.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Heat kills more people than hurricanes, tornadoes and floods combined. Ignorance of the dangers of heat is a huge issue across our society but it shouldn’t be criminalized in this one narrow instance and then ignored in every other context.
About 20 children die a year from heatstroke in cars in a country of 300 million people. How many kids get left alone in cars for more than a few minutes? These criminal prosecutions focus on one event in a chain of events and as far as I can tell there is almost no enforcement of benign instances of leaving a kid in the car. A parent has two kids, one school age, one not. The parent pulls up to drop Kid A off at elementary school and needs to go inside for 2 minutes to drop off a cake for a bake sale. The parent leaves a Toddler B in a baby seat with the car running just to pop in for a second. Do police prosecute that as neglect? Why not?
March 9th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
I can safely say that never, in a million years, would this happen to me. Yes, I can be “so sure” about that.
So, presumably, was Mr. Harrrison sure — before it happened to him.
In my life so far, I can think of many times when I was sure, absolutely sure, one hundred percent positive, that I would never do certain things or make certain mistakes — and then, sometimes only seconds later, sometimes months, sometimes years — I did them anyway.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
A criminal system that makes examples out of people is one that has horribly lost it’s way. for justice to exist, a judgment must be made on the facts of a case in total isolation. Any decision to punish this man so that others may learn a lesson is throwback to the bad old days when we prosecuted animals for crimes and locked people up in debtors prison. That way leads to madness, despair, and hopelessness. When we begin to judge others in such a way, it is inevitable that we ourselves will be judged in ways we could never imagine.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Nathan is demonstrating the ‘Other the parent in the story so as to be reassured that it can’t happen to you’ that the reporter talks about.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
bperk at 15 makes a solid point. My initial reaction was to be appalled that someone in this situation would be prosecuted, but bperk’s points actually completely convinced me.
Also, it should be easy to build a notification system into a car seat that plugs into the car’s electrical system somehow to detect if the car is running or not. If we have alarms that go off if you leave your lights on, having one that goes off if you leave baby in the car seat should be pretty straightforward.
You could also have a weight sensor built into the backseat that would cause the car to ding if anything were left there while the engine was off and any door was open, much how a lights on alarm works now. Such a system would probably cost 25 bucks a car, though, so clearly not worth the expense.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
“The folks saying Harrison shouldn’t have been charged with a crime seem to put themselves in Harrison’s shoes. That’s useful and usually essential when handing out punishment. It’s useless and even counter-productive when deciding if a crime has been committed.”
This seems completely backwards to me. Remorse is a mitigating factor when one commits a crime and then subsequently accepts responsibility for his actions. But this isn’t a matter of putting ourselves in the person’s shoes. It’s a matter of forgiveness.
When determining whether or not a crime has been committed, we usually try to determine the person’s intent. Was the death due to gross negligence, or deliberate intent, or was it just a damn tragic accident?
This is the stage in which it’s important to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Is it possible for an ordinary person, who was neither irresponsible nor neglectful, to simply fuck up and shoulder the personal consequences of said fuckup with no public good served by additional legal sanction?
I can easily imagine myself in those shoes, and I don’t see any possible public good coming from adding prosecution and legal bills to what these parents are going through.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
The parent leaves a Toddler B in a baby seat with the car running just to pop in for a second. Do police prosecute that as neglect? Why not?
They may not choose to prosecute, but in my experience (7pm, Oro Valley, AZ, son in car while putting shopping cart back) may choose to deliver a very stern talking to, while other parents add their glare. That also has an impact.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Once, when I was a young, harried mother, I drove to work without dropping my child at daycare– just inattention. If I hadn’t accidentally dropped my wallet in the backseat, I would have forgotten him. It was winter, and he would have frozen to death. Whenever I hear such a case, I think, “There but for the grace of God go I.” I certainly don’t think there was a crime here, and I think if people were honest, most parents would admit to being very lucky and getting away with some stupid parenting mistake. Are we going to criminalize being human now?
Back when we strapped the child into a carseat in the FRONT seat, this probably wouldn’t have happened by the way. That is, this is partly the result of taking the child out of the view of the parent. There are always tradeoffs. It’s safer to have the child in the backseat, but…
March 9th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
No. You. Can’t.
March 9th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
It shouldn’t really, because the empathetic “putting myself in Harrison’s shoes” is a strawman. Rather, the “in Harrison’s shoes” is an attempt to determine intent, just as in other situations in which we judge whether or not the “negligence causing death” is criminal.
It’s often a very small mistake. The most massive consequences imaginable. But that doesn’t make it a big mistake. I think it’s about right that it’s the DA’s call, and I also think the DA who prosecuted Harrison is an asshole.
March 9th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
That poor man.
March 9th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
I see the DA that charged this guy was asked whether he could imagine having done it himself, and he seemed to have never considered the question. After giving it some thought he said “I have to say no, it couldn’t have happened to me. I am a watchful father.” I guess you can divide the world, perhaps usefully, into those who immediately imagine themselves doing this and those who never consider whether they could.
That’s an observation unrelated to the question of whether he should be prosecuted.
March 9th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
DTM’s argument makes no sense. Simply calling Harrison’s act a “crime” isn’t likely to deter anyone else from committing it. The obvious reason for imposing some kind of penalty on Harrison is to scare other parents into being more careful about leaving their children in cars.
March 9th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
This has happened 3 times in Cincinnati in the past 4 years or so; each time it was a Giant News Story for a few months, even though only one person was charged (the African-American one, naturally–because The System Is Fucked).
I actually support pressing charges–maybe even a non-punitive guilty sentence–on the basis that the public needs to be protected from the future actions of these parents:
1. I imagine the suicide and homicide rates are higher in this group, and they should have some kind of surveillance
2. For example, one is (still) a kindergarten principal (one of the white ones, naturally). I, for one, want her nowhere near my (theoretical) kids. However, she can’t be fired for it unless it’s a crime, and her mistake needs to be public record in perpetuity.
March 9th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
“The argument is that it’s better to put the onus on parents to remember, and while that might result in a few wrongful convictions, you have to balance it against the rightful ones that would otherwise not happen with a different rule.”
Sorry, Joe, but I’m reminded of Benjamin Franklin’s quote that “it is better one hundred guilty persons should escape than that one innocent person should suffer.” I agree with Ben. And last I checked, the onus isn’t on the accused to prove that they are innocent, but on the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are guilty.
Reading through the comments, I wonder how many actually read the article before commenting. There are many who obviously think that an object of such importance as their own child could never slip from their memory, that if they prioritize their lives correctly and appropriately such errors will never occur. But the human brain doesn’t work that way. It’s an amazing machine, but there is so much we don’t understand about it. Those who claim they could absolutely never ever forget their baby in the backseat are deluding themselves. It can happen; it will happen. It’s the nature of our human frailities.
And we’re not talking about people who leave their kids with the car running while they run an errand — people who make a conscious decision to place their children in potential harm. Nor it is really about who happened to be strapped in the baby seat or what their destination was. It’s about an oh-so-human mistake which could happen to any of us — and for those it has happened to, will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
March 9th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
It isn’t a crime to leave your toddlers unattended, but perhaps it should be.
March 9th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
There was a case some time ago where a father made a conscious decision to leave his child in the carseat during winter while he went to hunt a deer he saw. It took longer than he expected; the child got out of the car and froze to death in the snow. The father was, of course, grief-stricken; he was sentenced to jail time but committed suicide on the day he was supposed to turn himself in.
That father, obviously, did a worse thing than Harrison did, since he made the decision consciously. As for the debate on Harrison, I’m not convinced either way—but I would like to see the people saying he should not have been prosecuted respond to the point some here have made: if a babysitter killed the child in the same way, should the babysitter be prosecuted?
March 9th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Read the article people. And read it all the way to the end. It will blow your mind.
Also read up on the current understanding of memory and attention. It’s somewhat covered in the article. There was a good article in The New Yorker a few years back about people who have automobile accidents where “they didn’t see” whatever it was they hit. Basically, to help you through the day, your mind starts zoning out when you are in very usual situations, and/or very stressed/tired. Have you ever been a passenger in a car or bus, not asleep, and been suddenly surprised to realize that you are at your destination? That is the effect we are talking about. And it happens to “careful” people as much as scatterheaded ones.
More children under 12 are killed in non-traffic accidents than are kidnapped and murdered by strangers (including those who disappear and are never found).
People think they are not criminals, so if something is made a crime it makes it something they are incapable of. Not true.
March 9th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Incidentally, here’s a link to the Pulitzer-winning story about the man who abandoned his child to hunt a deer. It’s extremely powerful writing, and includes the judge’s reflections on whether the sentence he handed down caused the father to kill himself.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
I would pay just about anything for a device to warn me, luckily my kids is likely out of the danger age, but as a fairly absent minded guy at best, I was continually scared about doing this when he was a baby. It boggles the mind that there isn’t some fail safe device that is required, or at least available for purchase.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Isn’t this a question of punishment? Level and type of punishment. Let a jury do the sentencing.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Am I the only one that thinks the prosecutions in these cases were just outcomes? One of the DA’s says something along the lines of this not being a decision for a jury and I could not disagree more. This is exactly the reason a jury of average people, your peers, is so valuable. I think it is right the people were charged and tried. They were responsible for the lives of these children and they let them die. This should be prosecuted. Several people have pointed out ways this could have been different. What if the child didn’t belong to the driver. What if the driver chose to leave the child there, but didn’t think it would matter etc etc. How do we decide which negligent driver gets prosecuted? If we left it up to DA’s complete discretion we all know what will happen rich white people won’t get prosecuted, poor dark ones will.
I want legislators to make laws. I want DA’s to enforce them. And I want juries to judge them. I think it is right these people were prosecuted, but I also think it was right, in these cases based upon my admittedly limited knowledge of the individual cases from this article (the only thing any of us really now about any of this case as far as I can tell) that these defendants were found not guilty. I say the system worked.
My opinion on the specific case of Matt’s post might change if I ever found out what fell apart during plea bargaining. That is a huge hole in this article that begs to be filled.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Oh, and would it be callous of me to not want this sensor everyone seems enamored with made mandatory in every car. I don’t have kids, will never have kids, and I don’t want my car to beep at me whenever I want to leave the bowling ball in the car and I should not have to pay for the extra accessory I don’t need or want. It may only cost $25 bucks, but car companies will charge at least $250 judging from the mark up on a simple stock CD player, and they would probably charge me $500 to remove it.
I have a suggestion. Rate each individual car’s child safety-ness on a scale of 0-10 and place it on the sticker with the gas mileage. That way those without kids can buy a 0 and we can require a rank of 7 or greater for kids under 5, 4 or greater for kids between 5-10 etc etc.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
No-one ever seems to pick up on the fact that maybe this kind of thing happens because these families go everywhere in their cars in places where everyone else goes everywhere in their cars. Now I am fortunate enough to live in a place where I can get by without a car, but when I was visiting my brother and his wife in the suburbs their was house- car-work-and-daycare-car-house-car-big box stores-car-house. Every day. The inherent isolation of that lifestyle — you live only with your family, you drive only with your family, you shop only with your family –must contribute to this sort of thing. One person may forget the baby; two are less likely to do so. But when is there anyone else in the car? Only if you have a visiting relative from New York, in which case the visiting relative becomes the toddler amuser in the back seat of the car.
I really think we need to redo what we consider normal, especially our dependence on the car, and stories like this contribute to that.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
“When determining whether or not a crime has been committed, we usually try to determine the person’s intent.”
No,usually we don’t. Intent is something taken into consideration after you decide a crime has been commmitted, when figuring out what degree of criminal behavior is at issue. Intent is the difference between manslaughter and murder. I’ve never heard of a case where intent was the difference between murder and justifiable homicide. Intent does not make the difference between rape and consensual sex. Intent may mitigate a crime but it does not change the nature of a criminal act.
And just to remind everyone, the people who say Harrison shouldn’t have been charged with a crime have yet to explain how that same reasoning would and wouldn’t apply if the babysitter had killed the kid in the exact same circumstance or if Harrison had killed someone else’s kid.
Mike
March 9th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
“It’s about an oh-so-human mistake which could happen to any of us — and for those it has happened to, will haunt them for the rest of their lives.”
Unless you’re arguing that there should be no such thing as criminal negligence, I have no idea what you’re point is but I’m pretty damn sure you wouldn’t want to live in a world where people’s thoughtless accidents can result in the death of others and the justice system simply shrugs its shoulders.
Mike
March 9th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Intent is the difference between manslaughter and murder. I’ve never heard of a case where intent was the difference between murder and justifiable homicide.
Ever heard of self-defense? Accidental shootings?
Like I said before, you have this completely backward.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
MBunge,
You are very confused. The presence of absence of intent may be the only thing that distinguishes a criminal act from a lawful one.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Mike, my argument really has little to do with whether Miles Harrison (or others in the same situation) should or should not have been prosecuted (although I admit lean on the side he should not have been). My point is, those who claim that such a horror couldn’t possibly happen to them — and therefore people like Mr. Harrison must necessarily be prosecuted and punished — are ignoring the bigger picture. In the case of Mr. Harrison, his failure was not that of conscience or character, but of memory. The brain, as marvelous of a machine as it is, is not by any stretch of the imagination a perfect instrument.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
I’ve done research on children’s fatalities. Sadly, there are quite a few deaths that occur each year from children being left in cars or vans. There is often a pattern. The usual plan for dropping children off was somehow disrupted. One parent rather than another took the child; the driver of a day care van substituted for another or followed a somewhat different route because another child was added or one usually picked up was not due to illness or other absence. However minor the circumstance, it leads to error.
Child care centers should protect against such errors by following rigorous procedures. Vans should be checked by another person, not just the driver, when unloaded. Parents, also, should be aware that they can make a tragic mistake when they follow a different pattern from their usual one. They need to think consciously about this, and remind each other, and themselves, that they have to be hyper-alert when deviating from the usual pattern.
I know it seems almost unbelievable that such tragedies could follow from such minor changes in circumstance. But they do. And we are all potentially subject to them. We all need to be reminded to think, always, of what might be different on any given day and of what tremendous import that difference might have. And for parents, if they change their pattern, if one takes the child when he or she doesn’t usually, the other should call. Believe me, this tragedy is not unknown. It is rare in the big scheme of things, but forgotten children die in vans and cars every year.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
“Ever heard of self-defense? Accidental shootings?
Like I said before, you have this completely backward.”
You can’t claim self-defense unless there’s a threat to your life. Any intent to defend yourself is irrevelent if that threat doesn’t exist. And if you shoot someone by accident, that generally is going to get your charged with SOME sort of crime. Your intent, or lack of it, may decide WHAT crime you get charged with but not whether you get charged or not. That will depend on how reckless, irresponsible or dangerous your actions were. Whether you drop a guy or spin it around on your finger, your intent to not shoot anyone is the same. But you’re far less likely to be charged with a crime on the drop than on the spin.
Don’t let your fear of being judged blind you to the obvious logic at work here.
MIke
March 9th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Once when I was engaged, my fiancee was supposed to pick me up after work (we both worked downtown in D.C.), and he just forgot . . . he just took his regular route home and was almost all the way home before he remembered. I was pretty pissed having to wait an extra 45 minutes (when he turned around and came back to get me). I shouted at him, “What’s the matter with you — are you going to forget your kids too?” I think my anger made an impression on him. We now have two kids (12 and 9), and he hasn’t forgotten them once. In fact, he is completely phobic that one of them will be stranded someplace because one of us will have forgotten to pick them up. Because of their busy schedules, we basically need an excel spreadsheet, many daily conversations, and our Google on-line calendar to keep the picking up and dropping off schedule straight. We’re completely captive to their needs. Wonder if that makes us good parents, or just good chauffeurs.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
beset by problems at work, making call after call on his cellphone
No one has mentioned that. I’ve seen numerous references about how dangerous it is to drive and talk on the cell phone. As dangerous as driving drunk. Change the story to “the father sideswiped a bridge abutment, his blood alcohol level, tested 15 minutes after the accident was .15 nearly twice the limit.”
Why was he on the phone at all. Whenever I get a cell phone call in the car I tell the caller “I will call you back, I’m driving” And I only answer calls from people I know. That’s what voice mail is for.
It’s awful that this happened but the father was not acting responsibly well before he forgot to drop off his child and well before he locked the car and wandered off. Very very good that this is getting publicized. I would hope it would make more employers more respectful of their employee’s time.
Sensors. It doesn’t need to be in the car, it can be in the carseat. Detects if the car is on and when it shuts off begin to beep. Of course there is then the problem with parents disabling the sensor or sensors that fail…
March 9th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
I’m an aerospace safety engineer, so I have a different perspective. There’s a societal fix for this. We used to have 1-3 incidents like this per year, in the entire US, UNTIL we started requiring small children to be placed in the back seat, facing backward. (Obviously, that makes a sleeping child extremely easy to miss.) This was primarily to protect children from passenger side airbags. No one realized the new regulation would lead to a more than ten-fold increase in hot car deaths.
Why not require all new cars to have an on/off switch for passenger side airbags, and allow children in the front passenger seat if the airbag is “off” or the car doesn’t have passenger side airbags? We’d probably have to make the restraints in car seats more robust- we can do that.
Also, it helps if the public is alert to this. At my employers, since we’re national defense, we have to drive through a security checkpoint to get to work. Our security folk have been told to check routinely for babies in the back seat- and so far, they’ve found one baby (whose mom had totally forgotten that the child was there). One life saved.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
“You are very confused. The presence of absence of intent may be the only thing that distinguishes a criminal act from a lawful one.”
If you steal to feed your family or steal to feed your drug habit, it’s still stealing.
Now, it is true that intent makes a difference when a doctor cuts off someone’s foot to save their life vs. cutting off someone’s foot just to mutilate them. If those are the sort of extremely limited circumstances you mean, then intent does make a difference. I suspect you’re applying the principal far too broadly and indiscriminately.
Mike
March 9th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
“My point is, those who claim that such a horror couldn’t possibly happen to them — and therefore people like Mr. Harrison must necessarily be prosecuted and punished — are ignoring the bigger picture. In the case of Mr. Harrison, his failure was not that of conscience or character, but of memory. The brain, as marvelous of a machine as it is, is not by any stretch of the imagination a perfect instrument.”
Again, what if it was the babysitter who killed the kid in the exact same way and for the exact same reason? Would he or she get a pass? What if Harrison had killed someone else’s kid? What if they next guy killed his kid in the exact same way and for the exact same reason but was a cold-hearted bastard and wasn’t that tore up about it? Are you saying its the level of grief someone feels afterwards that determines the criminality of their actions?
Mike
March 9th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
If you steal to feed your family or steal to feed your drug habit, it’s still stealing.
The difference you’re referring to here is a difference of motive, not intent. Like I said, you’re very confused. You appear to have never heard of accidents. The only thing distinguishing a crime of murder from a fatal accident may be intent.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
I agree completely with Matt here (boy, is that rare!)
There is zero benefit from charging this guy. There is no “preventive” effect because by definition people forget to do things they should and other people die. There is no “punishment” effect because this guy has already been punished by his own mind.
There is NO “criminality” here. It is solely and purely a case of unintended and accidental death.
Sure, the guy is “responsible” for the death of another person. But there was virtually no way he was going to be able to prevent that from happening. The cell phone issue is irrelevant. He simply could have forgotten regardless of the cause.
And despite his responsibility, punishing him isn’t going to change anything one iota. The kid isn’t going to live. Nobody else is going to be prevented from dying. He isn’t going to be able to “change” so “rehabilitation” isn’t even a concept that’s applicable here.
“Criminal negligence” is applicable only when you KNEW somebody would get hurt and you simply didn’t care enough to remedy the possibility. That doesn’t apply here.
It’s ridiculous. It’s just another example of how chimpanzees insist on establishing their “moral superiority” over each other – just to establish their social superiority because their pathetic primate hierarchical behavior patterns.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
You can’t claim self-defense unless there’s a threat to your life.
IANAL, but this is certainly wrong. The key is that you reasonably perceive a threat to your life, not that one actually exist. And, therefore, the key is your intent.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
From Weingarten’s chat, in which he discusses the actual law:
March 9th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
“Again, what if it was the babysitter who killed the kid in the exact same way and for the exact same reason? …”
Mike, now we’re getting into a philosophical argument on morality and law. We could play out “what ifs” all day long, and agree or disagree on a variety of theoretical situations. But I think you misunderstand what I’m trying to say, which it is disingenuous to crucify Mr. Harrison for a lapse in memory which I assert could have happened to any of us.
“Are you saying its the level of grief someone feels afterwards that determines the criminality of their actions?”
No. Now you’re putting words into my mouth.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
How can it be callous disregard for life if the parent, indisputably, did not know there was a life in the car?
Like I say, I’m undecided, but that argument seems absurd on its face. No one smuggled a child into Harrison’s car. Forgetting that the child was there would certainly appear to some to be callous disregard for life.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
And the refusal to discuss the babysitter scenario continues. Matt C, it’s not just an idle philosophical speculation: it matters because it’s a test of whether only negligence towards one’s own child, and not other children, is morally or legally forgivable. When you say that “it is disingenuous to crucify Mr. Harrison for a lapse in memory which I assert could have happened to any of us,” I have to assume that, on the same grounds, you would decline to prosecute a babysitter who did the exact same thing. Otherwise, your defense of Harrison isn’t solely based on a human mistake like you say; it’s also based on Harrison’s status as the father of the dead child.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Forgetting that the child was there would certainly appear to some to be callous disregard for life.
Only if you assume that peoples’ memories aren’t subject to lapses outside their control. Weingarten makes a case otherwise. What’s your counter-argument? That it just can’t be true?
March 9th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
And the refusal to discuss the babysitter scenario continues.
Given a lapse of the sort Weingarten describes, the hypothetical babysitter shouldn’t be prosecuted.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Politicalfootball, you make a good point about involuntary lapses, and I’m glad to see your moral consistency regarding the babysitter. It would take a lot of prosecutorial courage not to charge a babysitter in that scenario.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:06 am
From the chat linked above, Weingarten discusses the political imperatives in these cases:
March 10th, 2009 at 12:29 am
The problem I have saying categorically the parents should not be charged is the fact that all we know about these cases is through one article by one talented writer who is very good at making us laugh and making us cry. He mentions early in the piece that these accidental deaths are very rare and that there are similar occurrences where the presence of a crime is more clear and not only are those prosecuted, but there are many doing time and rightly so. I am sure we can all find an example at each extreme, but what about the vast majority in the middle? How do we decide if enough remorse is being shown? If we are to allow a parent to punish himself, what about a step-parent? A Grand parent? A friend? Certainly, we can agree the man who went to hunt a deer was negligent, but what about someone stopped for baby formula and was held up or forgot there was a kid in the car just long enough for death, or worse, permanent mental damage? We probably can agree that a drunk parent should be charged if he or she forgot the kid in a drunken stupor, but what about prescription drugs or over the counter drugs? Everyone says all of these parents were model parents with no history of past neglect or abuse, (and we are all supposed to believe this on the testimony of the friends and family reported by the author) but what if there was such evidence? Maybe some evidence of malnutrition or a bruise with a shaky justification. It could be innocent, but then it happened two weeks before the baby’s death so maybe it is something more.
So the reason I tend to side with charging these parents (not without misgivings and/or a realization that we don’t have all the pertinent facts) is from simple fairness. I cannot honestly say where to draw the line between an accident worthy of charging and one that doesn’t so I can’t justify charging one without charging the other and when DA’s are given too much discretion on these issues too often social, cultural, and economic prejudices (and political ambitions) tend to be more important than the facts of the case. I trust a jury of 12 more than the legal acumen of the DA’s office to reach the right decision.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:35 am
And one other technology fix you could probably institute right now for only a couple hundred dollars and no burden on anyone without kids.
GPS. My wrist GPS can alert me when I go too fast, too slow, make a wrong turn, am coming up on the right turn, my heart rate is too fast or slow etc. I bring it home, plug it in and it instantly works with google maps to tell me all the places I went and this little thing only cost $200. I don’t think it would be that hard to interface your car gps with your cell phone to tell you if you didn’t go someplace you programmed the night before. And most cars being sold these days probably already have the hardware built in for this.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:53 am
Adolphus, I would have no problem with negligence charges for people who knowingly leave their children in the car for any amount of time. That to me is like the person who has a bit to drink and then goes driving just over the limit, and kills someone: the consequence may be disproportionate to the severity of the infraction, but the person is still responsible for the infraction that they consciously committed.
What complicates the cases in these articles is that they are not based on conscious decisions. Now, I’m not ready to say that that in itself keeps it being negligence, but it does complicate the picture beyond what you’ve persented.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:58 am
That should be “this article,” not “these articles”; I mean the Post article. The article about the dad who followed the deer seems like an unambiguous case of criminal homicide to me, whether or not jail time should have been given.
March 10th, 2009 at 2:33 am
I want to thank Matt Y. for linking to a very moving article. Nobody in these comments has mentioned Lyn Balfour, but it’s her story and her courage in reaching out to Miles Harrison that made me tear up.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:04 am
I’ve read all the comments down to here, and not one person brought up the fact that this man has already received the worst punishment imaginable (one that many of the commenters here have said warrant them killing themselves). There’s no need for him to do jail time.
Call it a crime, tell him to get counseling, and let him try to put his life back together.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:22 am
Don’t bother Jeremy, these morons are conducting a primitive ritual to absolve themselves from all fear that this sort of thing could happen to them. So they tell themselves that only a monster could allow this to happen. They forget all those times they forgot to let the dog in at night, or left their lunch at home when they were getting ready for work. They tell themselves that that is different, because kids weren’t involved. But the reality is, this could be anyone. That thought terrifies them so greatly that they will never even consider it.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:36 am
I bring it up mostly in response to the people upthread who posit what we’d do if someone else did this to our kid.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:38 am
Btw, this is why I only have plants. I don’t even trust myself with a cat. And I still forget to water my plants.
March 10th, 2009 at 5:42 am
62: You know, as an engineer, I think you are exagerating how easy it is to solve a problem like this. 1-3 deaths -> 20 deaths a year is not a ten fold increase. It’s an additive increase of 20 deaths/year on top of whatever the total number of ‘preventable’ child deaths/year is in the US. If you make a change, there could easily be an impact that results in a change somewhere else of more than 20 deaths/year and human nature is very hard to predict. Unfortunately, public policy makers don’t behave like engineers and weight the pros and cons of their decisions. So I don’t really expect rational policy making here. It’s possible that there is a better solution, but I wouldn’t rely on the government finding it when the difference one way or another is so subtle.
If you are really worried, maybe there is a way to attach a tracking device to your child that you can be in the habit of checking regularly? I guess a GPS is still too heavy for this, but I think the technology is basically there.
March 10th, 2009 at 10:20 am
I would pay just about anything for a device to warn me,
The article describes one person whose car alarm actually went off. He went over to the car to check it out, saw that there was no one breaking into his car, and deactivated the car alarm because he assumed it was a false alarm. Of course, his child died in his car.
March 10th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Re. the babysitter question. As a parent, if I thought the sitter had knowingly left the child alone, I would testify against them in sentencing. If I believed the sitter had made a terrible mistake and forgotten the child, I would testify on their behalf.
I’ve never left my daughter in the car, but I once forgot to strap her into her carseat. She had fastened the upper buckle herself, so she looked strapped in from the driver’s seat. She was convalescing from surgery, and I’d had little sleep for weeks. And because I was tired, I almost got into a major car accident that would have been 100% my fault. I try to avoid driving while exhausted these days, but some folks aren’t so fortunate.
I was negligent. I was lucky. My actions were no better than Mr. Harrison’s; only the outcomes differ. If he should go to jail, should I? If we imprisoned every negligent but lucky parent, there would be no room in the jails for anyone else, and few people left to raise our children.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
AZ Escapee, negligence happens. We have decided as a society that we are going to punish negligence when there are severe consequences. Obviously, every one of us is negligent at one time or another. Most of us are lucky that there were no consequences. However, it is our duty to make sure that we have routines with our children that don’t rely solely on our memory. There are a million routines that parents can use to make sure that they never forget to buckle their child’s seatbelt, or to drop them off at the babysitter, or anything else. If parents choose not to take any precautionary steps, and it results in the death of their child, I see no problem with treating it as a crime. Certainly, I feel for the parents in their grief, but I don’t think our criminal justice system should use remorse as a substitute for doing its job.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
“If we imprisoned every negligent but lucky parent, there would be no room in the jails for anyone else, and few people left to raise our children.”
Jiminy H. Christmas! I am stunned at the almost childish lack of understanding of the ethics and practicalities of justice and judgment. I genuinely don’t know how to engage someone dim witted enough to wonder if they should be imprisoned because they MIGHT HAVE killed their kid.
For pete’s sake, if you fire a loaded gun into a crowd and kill a mass murderer wanted by the FBI, you probably won’t get the same treatment as if you killed a mother of three. Does that mean that shooting into a crowd should NOT be considered a crime?
The argument that you shouldn’t punish people for killing othera (or any other sort of offense) if they didn’t mean to do it and are really sorry about it is…well, childish is the only word for it. Under that standard, the only folks who would ever end up in jail for anything would be the Snidely Whiplash’s who twirl their moustaches while tying poor Nell to the railroad tracks. Under that standard, the only think making Dick Cheney a war criminal is his lack of contrition.
Mike
March 10th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Er, that should be “punish people for killing others” and “the only thing making Dick Cheney”.
Don’t post angry!
Mike
March 10th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
O God, whose beloved Son did take little children into his arms and bless them: Give us grace, we beseech thee, to entrust this child _Chase Harrison_ to thy never-failing care and love, and bring us all to thy heavenly kingdom; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
March 10th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
@MBungne: I agree. It’s like when innocent people have accidents we forget about the legal system. Reading all these comments (including MattY’s original post) makes me question the jury system and glad we have judges.
The analogy I keep thinking of is vehicular manslaughter. Yeah no one really intends to kill people with their cars but it happens and there should still be investigation, prosecution and sentencing. Even if the sentencing is light. Jurisprudence, people.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
the Angel Alert Child Distance Monitor may be an answer.
http://babyproducts.about.com/od/recallsandsafety/gr/angelalert.htm
March 10th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Jiminy H. Christmas! I am stunned at the almost childish lack of understanding of the ethics and practicalities of justice and judgment. I genuinely don’t know how to engage someone dim witted enough to wonder if they should be imprisoned because they MIGHT HAVE killed their kid.
This is a classic problem in ethics. What is the difference between a drunk driver who makes it home safely and a drunk driver who kills a family of four? From a moral standpoint, it is hard to argue that the two are any different–the problem of “moral luck.” It was only sheerest accident that the first driver made it home safely. We as a society have chosen to punish the unlucky and negligent but not the lucky and negligent (mostly for practical reasons, I suppose).
For pete’s sake, if you fire a loaded gun into a crowd and kill a mass murderer wanted by the FBI, you probably won’t get the same treatment as if you killed a mother of three. Does that mean that shooting into a crowd should NOT be considered a crime?
Um, that’s basically the point the poster you quoted was trying to make. Firing a loaded gun into a crowd is wrong because you might kill the innocent. If you killed a mass murderer instead, then you should be treated the same, IMHO (and you likely would be).
The argument that you shouldn’t punish people for killing othera (or any other sort of offense) if they didn’t mean to do it and are really sorry about it is…well, childish is the only word for it.
This is a strawman. First you ignore the concept of negligence, whereby the lazy, inattentive, or impaired increase their chance of causing harm. For something to be considered manslaughter, for example, negligence is required. From Wikipedia:
For example, say you’re driving down the street. I slip on the ice and you run over my head, killing me brutally. Did you kill me? Yes. Was it your fault. Nope. It was an accident. As far as I can tell, you reject the possibility of accidents.
One might argue that leaving the kid in the car is negligent (and it certainly could be), but from the article:
Basic psychology makes it clear that these sorts of horrifying mistakes are most likely when the right combination of stress, emotion, lack of sleep, and broken routine is present. It can happen to anyone, and negligence is not a factor. It’s a flaw in the way the brain works.
March 10th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Russell, in your example of an accident with the slip on the ice, it is really not at all the driver’s fault. The driver is doing exactly what the driver should be doing. In a manslaughter example, the driver is driving too fast and fiddling with the radio instead of paying attention to the road. The latter is much more akin to the situation of leaving your baby in the car. Accidents happen, but they can’t be predicted and prevented. What happens when you forget your baby in the car is both predictable and preventable. I can’t even fathom a definition of negligence that would not include forgetting your child in a hot car.
I completely reject the assertion that it could happen to anyone. Those factors that contribute to these deaths are true of parents all over this country every day, yet only 20-25 people kill their children in this way each year. Obviously, the other parents somehow manage to overcome those things to ensure the safety of their children.
March 10th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
“I completely reject the assertion that it could happen to anyone. Those factors that contribute to these deaths are true of parents all over this country every day, yet only 20-25 people kill their children in this way each year. Obviously, the other parents somehow manage to overcome those things to ensure the safety of their children.”
That’s a logical fallacy. You might as well say to someone that got hit by a car while crossing the street, “Plenty of people cross the street every day, but very few of them get hit by cars. You must have made a poor decision that led you to get hit.”
Your other point is stronger, since it stands on the question of responsibility. On the other hand, the point remains that forgetting a baby is not a conscious decision, while fiddling with the radio, or driving drunk, is. On the other other hand, if someone causes a car accident while spacing out—obviously not a conscious decision, and in fact a phenomenon that the Post author compares with forgetting a baby—they’re still liable for it. So it’s a pickle.
March 10th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
As an attorney who does criminal law in NY, I think there is a reason we have manslaughter charges and this is what they are for.
Don’t give this guy a free ride on his criminally negligent act. If he was black would we be making the same argument? possibly.
He had a duty- like a fiduciary duty- to that child who could not take care of themselves. He breached that duty, and the child died. leave the sentencing to the jury.
Of course, if I was being paid by him, my answer would be different- I would be representing his interests and arguments as opposed to my own.
March 10th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
tomemos, I don’t think it is a logical fallacy, at least it isn’t one I can think of. I am making a point about doing something active, not something passive happening to someone. Forgetting their kids is not something that happens to them, it is something they did. Lots of people don’t make the same error with the same stress, so what is the basis for believing that it could happen to anyone? That is completely different than something happening to you like getting hit by a car.
It seems to be part of the basis of why I think it is okay to prosecute when these tragedies happen is the conscious/unconscious distinction you made. I consider it a conscious decision because they failed to take precautions to prevent it from happening. The forgetting part I completely understand. I agree that it is unconscious. The failure to implement some system to make sure you don’t forget is what I don’t understand. It’s a conscious failure to take precautions to me. And, that, to me, is negligence.
April 9th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
to leave yr baby for a whole 9 hours in the sweltering heat, for poor chase to be cooked alive in his SUV, and his excuse is he forgot about him, what kind of dad does that make him? and where is the justice for chase? if miles was poor, or black, i think he would have been found guilty, sorry but that what i think, money talks hey!